Only his subject was; it cannot bee
Love, till I love her that loves mee.

But every moderne god will now extend
His vast prerogative as far as Jove,
To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend,
All is the purlewe of the god of love.
Oh! were wee wakned by this tyrannie
To ungod this child againe, it could not bee
I should love her, who loves not mee.

Rebell and Atheist too, why murmure I,
As though I felt the worst that love could doe?
Love may make me leave loving, or might trie
A deeper plague, to make her love mee too,
Which, since she loves before, I am loth to see
Falsehood is worse than hate; and that must bee,
If shee whom I love, should love mee.

BREAKE OF DAY.

'Tis true, 't is day, what though it be?
O! wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise, because 't is light?
Did we lie down, because 't was night?

Love which, in spight of darkness, brought us hither,
Should, in despight of light keepe us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;

If it could speake as well as spie,
This were the worst, that it could say,
That being well, I faine would stay,

And that I lov'd my heart and honor so,

That I would not from him, that had them, go.

Must businesse thee from hence remove?

Oh, that's the worst disease of love,

The poore, the foule, the false, love can

Admit, but not the busied man.

He which hath businesse, and makes love, doth doe Such wrong, as when a maryed man doth wooe.

THE MESSAGE.

SEND home my long strayd eyes to mee,
Which, (oh) too long have dwelt on thee,
Yet since there they have learn'd such ill,
Such forc'd fashions

And false passions,
That they be

Made by thee

Fit for no good sight, keep them still.
Send home my harmlesse heart againe,
Which no unworthy thought could staine,
Which if it be taught by thine
To make jestings
Of protestings,
And breake both

Word and oath,

Keepe it, for then 't is none of mine.
Yet send me back my heart and eyes,
That I may know, and see thy lyes,
And may laugh and joy, when thou
Art in anguish

And dost languish

For some one

That will none,

Or prove as false as thou art now.

THE LEGACY.

WHEN I dyed last, and, Deare, I dye

As often as from thee I

goe,

Though it be but an houre agoe,

And lovers houres be full eternity,

I can remember yet, that I

Something did say, and something did bestow;
Though I be dead, which sent mee, I might be
Mine owne executor and legacie.

I heard mee say, Tell her anon

That my selfe, that 's you, not I,

Did kill me, and when I felt mee dye,

I bid mee send my heart, when I was gone,

But I alas could there finde none.

When I had ripp'd me and search'd where hearts should lye,

S

It kill'd mee again, that I who still was true
In life, in my last will should cozen you.

Yet I found something like a heart,
But colours it and corners had,

It was not good, it was not bad,

It was intire to none, and few had part.
As good as could be made by art

It seem'd, and therefore for our losses sad,
I meant to send this heart in stead of mine;
But oh, no man could hold it, for 't was thine.

SONG.

SWEETEST Love, I do not goe

For wearinesse of thee,

Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for mee;

But since that I

Must dye at last, 't is best,

To use myselfe in jest

Thus by fain'd death to dye.

Yesternight the sunne went hence,

And yet is here to-day,

He hath no desire nor sense,

Nor halfe so short a way:

Then feare not mee,

But beleeve that I shall make

Speedier journeyes, since I take
More wings and spurres then hee.

O how feeble is man's power,
That if good fortune fall,

Cannot adde another houre,
Nor a lost houre recall?
But come bad chance,

And wee joine to it our strength,

And wee teach it art and length,

Itselfe or us t' advance.

When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not winde,

But sigh'st my soule away,

When thou weep'st, unkindly kinde,

My life's blood doth decay.

It cannot bee

That thou lov'st mee, as thou say'st;
If in thine my life thou waste,
That art the best of mee.

Let not thy divining heart
Forethinke me any ill,
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy feares fulfill
But thinke that wee

;

Are but turn'd aside to sleepe;
They who one another keepe
Alive, ne'er parted bee.

SONG.

GOE, and catche a falling starre,
Get with child a mandrake roote,
Tell me, where all past yeares are,
Or who cleft the divels foot,

Teach me to heare mermaides singing,
Or to keep off envies stinging,

And finde what winde

Serves to advance an honest minde.
If thou beest borne to strange sights,

Things invisible to see,

Rede ten thousand daies and nights,
Till age snow white haires on thee,
Thou, when thou retorn'st, wilt tell mee
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And sweare no where

Lives a woman true, and faire.

If thou findst one, let mee know,

Such a pilgrimage were sweet,
Yet doe not, I would not goe,

Though at next doore wee might meet,

Though shee were true, when you met her,

And last, till you write your letter,

Yet shee will bee

False, ere I come, to two, or three.

BENJAMIN JONSON, as the name stood in the parish register-Ben Jonson, as it stands in the register of immortals-the posthumous child of a humble minister of the Church, was born within the City of Westminster early in the year 1574. His youth owed much to the kindness of a friend, who sent him to the Westminster Foundation; and but little to the ignorance of his bricklaying stepfather, who thought it right to withdraw him from such untradesmanlike studies. Ultimately, after a series of many troubles, incidents in the lives of all who struggle for themselves to greatness, foils which make success "stick fiery off indeed," Ben Jonson triumphed over the many disadvantages which had beset him; mastered entrance to the theatres which had been closed to him; proved himself one of their greatest intellectual servants; and forced from the genius of the time so free an acknowledgment of his own, that the members of the Club founded by Sir Walter Raleigh at the Mermaid,-the Shakspeares, the Beaumonts, the Fletchers, the Seldens, the Cottons, the Carews,-placed him by general consent in its chair-the town-chair, thereafter, of wit and scholarship-where he sat, in all the pomp and heraldry of letters, and received petitions from young poets "to be sealed of the tribe of Ben." The laurel of the court was afterwards given to him; and from that period, until death, he was incessantly occupied upon the masques, the poems, the comedies, and the tragedies - the WORKS, as he proudly calls them-which have immortalized his name. He died on the 6th of August, 1637. Three days after he was laid in Westminster Abbey, one of his convivial associates happened to pass up the aisle as a stone-cutter was replacing the pavement over the grave, and in a genuine împulse of the moment, gave the man eighteen-pence to carve the now celebrated epitaph, "O rare Ben Jonson !"

Rare he was indeed, personally as well as intellectually. He had constitutional infirmities to struggle with, but his heart was full of humanity. Sturdy and plainspoken he unquestionably was, for he could send back a message to a king from whom a tardy and slight gratuity had come to him in his poverty and sickness-"I suppose he sends me this because I live in an alley; tell him his soul lives in an alley." Severe too he was, at times, but that need not be urged as a reproach. One thing he never was, the canker and the curse of all social intercourse, indifferent. He had, in truth, a heart, which beat always strongly, whether for praise or blame. He was not a "contemner and scorner of others," for he has written the highest and most affectionate panegyrics on his contemporaries of any man that lived in his age. A "lover of himself" he might be, but yet he had a noble distrust of that affection; and a little vanity may be fairly enough allowed to one who was placed on a sort of critical judgment-seat by the consent of his greatest fellow-labourers in letters. His personal appearance, his "mountain belly," and his "rocky face," he has himself described. "He was of a clear and fair skin," says Aubrey; "his habit was very plain."

Ben Jonson's intellect was vast and solid-with a wonderfully reflective as well as creative power. His learning was as great as his intellect, and subject as freely to his will. His strong sense, his industry, and humour, were equally prodigious. The mind staggers at the amazing power with which he mined and worked his way under the surfaces of things, and brought up those weighty, yet common life, creations, Epicures Mammon, mine Hosts various, Bobadils, and Meercrafts. Here, however, we have little to do with these various characteristics. In his poems fancy has chief way-fancy, the most genial, and perhaps, after all, the most delightful of his attributes. Infinitely delicate and piquant it is, as our extracts prove-delicious in its tender sense of natural beauty, and playfully fantastic in expression. It is scarcely necessary to indicate in one or two of the poems we have given, an occasional throwing in of the mechanical with the fanciful-and a few pedantic touches which look as if designed merely to set off more strikingly the exquisite and natural delicacies around them. Sense and feeling, classical sentiment, and a fine taste for rural imagery, characterize his friendly epistles. In the lines to Beaumont, it is delightful to mark the involuntary yet manly fondness with which he confesses to his friend's praise. With this proof of a gentle and amiable mind, and of a disposition any thing but gross and overweening, we leave to the reader these thoughts of Rare Ben Jonson;-adding merely, in the emphatic words of a friend and contemporary, "he

writ all like a man."